Tuesday, December 30, 2014

A
trip to Sedona to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary
seemed like the perfect time to review hikes and burger joints from
Roger Naylor's new book, Boots & Burgers: An Arizona Handbook
for Hungry Hikers, so I marked a
few hikes and Google-mapped a couple of restaurants, and we set out
on a Wednesday evening. Thursday morning we rose with every intention of doing the Hiline Trail
(after a hardy breakfast at Coffee Pot Restaurant). But to get to
the trailhead, you have to drive up a rugged section of Schnebly Hill Road, and that's when we ran into a snag.

Our
little Toyota truck probably could have navigated that road, but I
wasn't 100% per cent sure, and the warranty on our tires is expired.
So after a brief foray about 20 feet in, where we immediately began
to wallow, I turned the truck around and parked it in the paved lot
next to Marg's Draw. That trail was tempting, but being unable to
drive up Schnebly Hill made me feel very curious about the road,
itself.

Schnebly
Hill is a very old trail. Martha Summerhayes and her party used it
to get to Sedona in the 1870s (Vanished Arizona).
I wondered if it would make a good hiking trail in its own right.
So Ernie and I decided to hike up the road to the trail head (we
figured it was about 2.5 miles), and then we would decide if we could
slog any further up the Hiline Trail, or if we should just turn
around and hike back. Our other option was to hike Marg's Draw,
which looked very alluring from the trailhead. We decided to do that
one the next time we return to Sedona, and set off up good ol'
Schnebly Hill.

I'm
glad we did, because I learned a few things I hadn't known before.
For one thing, I realized I'd like to buy a two-seater ATV some day.
Several of them passed us on the way, and I admired the way they
navigated the rugged rocks and soft sand/silt that challenge any kind
of wheels on that road. I also saw something I hadn't seen before.

If
you've read Wayne Ranney's book, Sedona Through Time,
you know about the Hickey Formation and the Plateau Basalts – but
those layers have eroded away in the Sedona area, and it's hard to
tell where they were. You see basalt rocks and boulders along Oak
Creek (some of them gigantic), but I hadn't seen them along the HWY
179 trails until I spotted them poking up out of the middle of
Schnebly Hill Road. I have no idea just how large those rocks are,
since they're almost completely buried by sand and silt from the
Hermit Shale and Schnebly Hill Formations – for all I know, they may
be as big as houses.

There
was a wash alongside the road with some standing water in pools and
the sort of slickrock you can find at Slide Rock State Park, Bell Rock, Red Rock State Park, etc. Recent running water had left
beautiful ripples in the fine sand/silt. We were careful not to
stick our gallumphy footprints in it. Overhead, on all sides, red
rock formations stared down at us. We made it all the way up to the
trail head – but decided to hike back down again, since our day was
turning toward afternoon. Four to five hours hiking is plenty for
me.

So
down we went again. We didn't accomplish my goal of hiking either
of those trails (this time around), but we succeeded at the burger
end of things beyond my wildest dreams. For our honeymoon supper, we
visited Cowboy Club in uptown Sedona. We both ordered the Cowboy Up
burger, which is adorned with bacon, cheddar cheese, crispy onions,
and BBQ sauce. The burger is ground sirloin, and we asked for ours
to be cooked well-done, yet they were still juicy and tasty. They
were served on a buttery pretzel roll (just as Roger described it).
From the way the burger was described, I thought it might be a bit
sloppy, but the ratio of toppings to meat and bun was just right. I
had the sweet potato fries with mine, and my husband had the beans.
We didn't need appetizers or desert, because the combo was quite
filling.

Friday, on
our drive back to Phoenix, we decided to take the scenic route and go
south on HWY 89A, through Cottonwood, Jerome, and Prescott. This is
one of the most beautiful drives you can do in AZ. It's interesting
if you're driving south to north, but I particularly enjoy it in the
other direction, climbing into Jerome instead of descending through
it. If you're the driver, you will have to remind yourself to watch
the road, because it twists and turns while continually revealing
breathtaking scenery.

By
the time we reached Prescott, I was ready to try another burger joint
from Roger's book, Bill's Grill. It doesn't seem to be on the main
drag through town, but it actually is. It's an innocuous little
place on a stretch of the highway at the southern end of town. Hwy
89 is called South Montezuma Street for that stretch, so don't let it
throw you.

We
chose to sit in the enclosed porch, mostly because we didn't realize
it was a porch, it was so cozy and well-protected from the elements.
This proved important, because on that particular day a storm was
passing through Arizona, bringing colder temps and lots of wind and
rain. We felt snug and comfy as we ordered the Southwest BBQ Burger
(I just can't resist the bacon). It doesn't come with a side – you
have to order that extra, but you may find you don't need it. The
burger is pretty big, and I couldn't make much of a dent in the sweet
potato fries I ordered (though they were perfect). It had a couple
of things in common with the burger I got at Cowboy Club. One was
that it also was not overwhelmed by its condiments. And the other
was that they use locally raised beef. These burgers were so tasty,
I think I've been spoiled for life.

So
there you have it – another foray into the hiking & burger
heaven of Roger Naylor's new book. I am convinced. I shall continue
my Naylor-guided explorations. Watch this space for further
developments . . .

My Lyre Music Featured in a Ballet Production!

Here are some details about the production from the video description:

"In an endless space, five dancers play sailors lost at sea... nothing to hang on to, no roots, no light, no land... just a never-ending horizon of waves. A melancholic and subtle meditation on the themes of Homer’s Odyssey, No Lander reflects upon longing and belonging. No Lander was initially developed as part of MiddlesexUniversity/ResCen research project ‘ArtsCross London 2013: Leaving Home, Being Elsewhere’ in August 2013 where a 10 minute version of the work was created"The video of this fascinating ballet production can be viewed and freely downloaded here.

The splendid choreography certainly adds an entirely new dimension to my composition!

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

How
would you prefer the world to end? That was a question that would
have struck me as odd a few years ago, before I realized there was a
sub-genre in science fiction called Post Apocalypse.

I
knew there was a sub-genre in horror – zombie novels – and they
also qualify as Post Apocalypse. I figured zombie stories
entertained people because they liked the idea of being able to kill
droves of enemies without feeling guilty about it. After all, those
enemies are already dead. Plus they want to eat you. If that AMC
show, The Walking Dead, is
any indication, those zombies can be quite a nuisance in large
groups, so I agree it's wise to shoot as many of them in the head as
you can, just to be safe.

But
zombies alone can't hold our attention for very long. In large
doses, you just get sick of them – you want the heroes to blow them
up already, and get on with the real story. And what is the real
story? It's about how things come unraveled.

The
why of it isn't as
important. We can all think of reasons for everything to go
to Hell in a hand basket. We've been watching that happen throughout
recorded history. There's a plague, a world war, a Kristallnacht.
Afterward, the experts have plenty to say about what went wrong and
why it all happened. But the people who survived are much more
interesting, because they tell us the details of how
it happened: the food supply was interrupted, the currency collapsed,
water stopped coming out of taps, no fuel was available for cars,
trains, and buses – a thousand details about the things we take for
granted until they're not working anymore.

It's
not that we're indifferent. The world comes to an end in all sorts
of smaller ways, for all of us, all the time. It's tempting to point
a finger at society in general and say What a bunch of
clueless, spoiled fools we are!We deserve to
be overrun by zombies. But we
don't deserve it. We're just fascinated by it. Because finding out
how things come apart teaches us how things work in the first place.

That's
why Alan Weisman's book, The World Without Us,
is so engrossing. He doesn't attempt to tell us why
the theoretical End of the World occurs in his book, he just
illustrates what happens when our infrastructure isn't being
maintained on a daily basis. National Geographic's World Without Humans follows the same
premise. Each episode shows us how various cities would fall apart:
buildings, roads, bridges, dams, and vehicles. It proves that we
don't take things for
granted, because we're maintaining all this stuff every day. It
shows us a big picture that we can't see on our own.

John
Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making
other plans.” (At least according to facebook, but it sounds like
something he could have said.) I think you could say the same thing
about the Apocalypse. The anxiety that things will fall apart
nibbles at us every day (especially those of us who are homeowners).
But anxiety isn't the only thing we feel when we contemplate the End
Of All We Know. There's some anticipation in there too. When old
worlds die, new ones are born. Creation and destruction are bound
together. In books and movies, that principle is usually exemplified
by a virus.

The
virus is what kills people. But often that wasn't its original
intention – it may have been engineered to do the opposite, to
preserve life by prolonging it. That's why those dead people
got up and started walking again; something is keeping them from
rotting completely away. It turns out that viruses are good delivery
systems for genetic information, so theoretically you could use one
to tweak human DNA. Or to cure people, or make them stronger, allow
them to live longer. If you're a writer, you can't help imagining
how all of that could go wrong – hence the zombies and
cannibalistic mutants that pervade popular culture these days. Maybe
they could be seen as symbols of our hubris.

But
they may be symbols of evolution, as well. Climate drives change,
but so does mutation. When the dinosaur-killing asteroid struck
Earth about 60 million years ago, it killed a lot of dinosaurs. Only
– it didn't. The change in climate killed a lot of species, and
the ones that survived evolved. Dinosaurs became birds, and early
mammals diversified. Natural selection and mutation worked paw in
claw to create new creatures.

In
our own way, we also become new creatures when our world comes to an
end. And as much as we hate and fear it, that may be part of the
appeal.

The
illustrations on this post are by Ernest Hogan, whose drawings are
always at least a little apocalyptic.

Em Foils the Mongolian Death Worm

About Me

I'm a writer -- Emily Devenport, Maggy Thomas and Lee Hogan are the pen names I used when I wrote my novels. I've been published in the U.S., the U.K., Italy, and Israel. My novels are SHADE, LARISSA, SCORPIANNE, EGGHEADS, THE KRONOS CONDITION, GODHEADS, BROKEN TIME (which was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award), BELARUS, and ENEMIES. Look for my new novels, THE NIGHT SHIFTERS, SPIRITS OF GLORY, and PALE LADY on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Kobo, Sony, Apple, and Smashwords. I'm married to artist/writer Ernest Hogan -- check out his Mondo Ernesto blog. I write reviews on amazon as Emily Hogan. Like most writers, I have an eye for the weird, and that's what I like to blog about. You can contact me at emdevenport(at)gmail.com. Please, no spam or death threats.

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One morning the people of the North woke up and the people of the South were gone . . .

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